He remembered the resolution he’d made last night and checked his watch. It had only just gone six-thirty. He’d forgotten to text his sister, but it would hardly matter. Most likely nobody would bother with visiting his mother on a week-night. If he got a hustle on he could be in Newry before eight, sit with her for an hour, and be back in Belfast by ten.
Lennon walked towards the car park on the Dublin Road, his mind flicking between a frail old woman, a frightened lawyer, and a little girl who didn’t know his name.
For the third time in twenty minutes, Lennon told his mother who he was. For the third time, she nodded with only a vague hint of recognition on her face. She fussed with her dressing gown for a moment before looking back up at the wall opposite her bed.
Every visit was like this, a string of bland exchanges punctuated by bouts of confusion. He came anyway, perhaps not as often as he should, but enough to be noticed. It wasn’t that he begrudged her the time. Rather it was that he hated to see her like this, even though she’d disowned him years ago. He hated that he’d had to wait for her mind to go before he could see her again. She was little more than a shadow of the woman who had giggled like a girl when he and his brother danced with her at weddings and confirmation parties.
‘The evenings are fairly drawing in,’ she said, looking to the growing darkness beyond the window. ‘Next thing you know, it’ll be Christmas. Who’s having Christmas this year?’
‘Bronagh,’ Lennon said. ‘It’s always Bronagh.’
Bronagh was the eldest of his three sisters. It was she who had told Lennon to leave and never come back all those years ago.
The day before Liam went in the ground, Phelim Quinn, who sat on Armagh City and District Council, called at Lennon’s mother’s house. He took the mother aside, expressed his condolences, and reminded her it wouldn’t do any good to talk to the police. Sure, they’d do nothing for them anyway. Liam had paid for his mistakes, and it would be best for everyone to just put it behind them, move on. In a very quiet voice, Lennon’s mother told Quinn to get out. As Quinn walked down the path to the small garden gate, Lennon caught up with him.
‘Liam wasn’t a tout,’ Lennon said. ‘He told me.’
Quinn stopped and turned. ‘He told me the same,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t make it so.’
Lennon’s throat tightened, his eyes burned. ‘He wasn’t. He said someone was covering themselves, putting the blame on him.’
Quinn came close to Lennon, the councillor’s whiskey breath souring the breeze. ‘Watch your mouth, son. Your family’s had enough grief. Don’t give them any more.’
Tears fought for release. Lennon forced them back. No way he’d cry in front of this bastard. No way. ‘You got the wrong man,’ he said. ‘Just you remember that.’
He turned and went back inside to where his mother and his three sisters huddled together. Still he held the tears back, the sting of them scorching his eyes as they tried to get out. He swallowed them, and he’d never cried a single tear since.
The day after Liam went in the ground, two uniformed cops came. Bronagh kept the mon the doorstep for ten minutes before her mother intervened and let them in. Lennon watched the cops from the living room doorway. They spoke in flat tones, their questions bland, their responses perfunctory. They knew they were wasting their time, Lennon could tell by their faces and their postures. Their visit was nothing more than a formality, a T to be crossed so that the case could be filed away with hundreds of others that would never be solved for lack of cooperation from the community.
Lennon stopped them in the hallway.
‘Phelim Quinn,’ he said.
‘What about him?’ the sergeant asked.
‘He did it. Or he knows who did it.’
The sergeant laughed. ‘I know who did it,’ the sergeant said. ‘Constable McCoy here knows who did it. Every other bloody person on this street knows who did it. The second any one of them will go on record, then we’ve got a case. Until then, we might as well go after Santa Claus.’
He put his hand on Lennon’s shoulder. ‘Listen, son, I’d dearly love to be able to put the bastards that killed your brother away. I really would. But you know as well as I do that’s never going to happen. Christ, if there was any chance of collaring them, it wouldn’t be lumps like us calling to see you, it’d be proper detectives. We make the notes, we fill out the forms, and that’s as much as we can do. Best thing you can do is stay out of trouble and look after your ma.’
The sergeant and constable left Lennon in the hall and closed the door behind them.
Over the following weeks, the house seemed frozen, everyone locked in grief, anger and fear, with no way to express it. As Lennon lay awake at night, now alone in the room he and his brother had shared, he considered the implications of his decision. He had filled out the forms, giving the address of his student digs in Belfast. He was back at Queen’s, starting his psychology Master’s, when the call for the first test came. The relief at getting away from his fractured home was tarnished by the fear of what he had embarked upon. Six months of interviews and physical exams followed while he worked part time as a porter at the Windsor House mental health unit at the City Hospital. All the time, he kept it secret, even from his friends at Queen’s.
Lennon spent fewer weekends at home, driving down from the city to the village in the second-hand Seat Ibiza he had inherited from his dead brother. The empty bed in his room seemed like a shrine to Liam, and its presence would allow him no sleep. He asked his mother once if he could remove it. She slapped him hard across the cheek, and he did not ask again. Bronagh began to exert more control over the household, organising meals, doling out chores to her younger sisters, while her mother spent her days staring at air.
A torturous Christmas passed, the meals taken in near silence. By March, the final hurdle loomed: the security checks. Lennon was sure they’d eliminate him because of his brother, and began to quietly wish for the rejection letter to arrive. A part of his mind that was both hopeful and fearful told him that perhaps, just maybe, his brother hadn’t been involved long or deeply enough for his name to be associated with any crime. Or perhaps supplying the Belfast address as part of his application would distance him from his family. When the letter arrived instructing him to report to Garnerville Police Training College for induction, he spent an age staring at the words, knowing he meant to attend, knowing his old life would be gone.
He went home one last weekend, chatted to some old school friends over a pint in the local, did messages for his mother, walked the length and breadth of the village. After Sunday Mass, he told his sisters and his mother over the roast dinner Bronagh had prepared. Claire and Noreen said nothing, just gathered their plates from the table, put them in the sink, and left the room while Bronagh sat still.
His mother gazed at the tablecloth, her body trembling. ‘You’ll be killed,’ she said. ‘Just like Liam. You’ll be killed. I can’t lose two sons. I can’t. Don’t go. You don’t have to go. You can change your mind. Stay at university, finish your Master’s, get a good job. Don’t do this. Don’t.’
‘It’s what I want to do,’ he said. ‘I need to do it. For Liam.’
Bronagh shook her head, her lip curled in disgust. ‘Don’t you dare use him to justify this. You know what this’ll do to your family. Ma won’t be able to show her face. We’ll be lucky if we’re not burnt out.’
‘But it’ll never change,’ Lennon said. ‘How can we complain about the RUC being a Protestant force when we refuse to join? How can we condemn them for not protecting this community when we won’t allow them to? I’m doing this for—’